Stubbing My Toe on Grace

I’m over at Today’s Christian Woman today, writing about what an old bed-and-breakfast taught me about the hard, beautiful work of marriage.

When my husband and I went away for the weekend to mark our second anniversary, we were looking for a place that fit in our budget and could squeeze into the boxes on the already-full calendar. What we hadn’t anticipated was that we’d meet a house with a story—a house that served as a poignant metaphor of marriage. . . .

Recently my article “Marriage Is Like Ice Cream” was published by Today’s Christian Woman. In the article I talk about the seasons of my marriage in terms of ice cream flavors:

When I think back on the time I’ve been married, I mark the time not so much in terms of years or months or seasons but in ice cream flavors. Classic vanilla bean. Chocolate coconut. Peanut butter swirl. Cinnamon waffle. Eggnog spice. Double dark chocolate.

I make the claim that marriage is a lot like ice cream—how it’s not just a mixture of different ingredients but that somewhere along the way, an altogether new entity is created.

As Daniel and I have experimented with various ice cream recipes, I’ve pondered what an appropriate metaphor it is for marriage. These ingredients—sweet grains of sugar, rich cream, eggs whipped to froth—taste completely different individually. But combine them, heat to 160 degrees, and churn in a frozen bowl for an hour, and you get an utterly unique sensation. It’s not just five things mixed together, but something altogether new. The five melding into one.

After my piece was published, I had a slew of requests for ice cream recipes (okay, there were two, but still…). I wanted to comply immediately, but there were two small glitches: (1) In all the times Daniel and I have used our ice cream maker, I’ve made ice cream approximately zero times. The truth is, Chef Daniel is the culinary genius behind it all, and my self-appointed job is to wash the dishes (and, of course, do the taste testing). And (2) Daniel is so creative that he doesn’t use a recipe and he never makes the same thing twice—he just looks around the pantry for inspiration and works his dairy magic.

But I was finally able to pin him down to some measurements and step-by-step instructions. This recipe was a recent favorite, and we hope you enjoy it. (Even if you don’t make it yourself, Daniel’s witty asides are pretty entertaining in themselves.)

Confetti Cake Ice Cream

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cups heavy whipping cream

2 ¼ cups whole milk (aka the good stuff!)

¾ cups sugar

4 egg yolks

1 ¼ cups confetti cake mix (use 1 ½ cups to make it really sweet!)*

pinch of salt

Directions:

1) In a medium saucepan over medium heat, whisk together milk, cream, half the sugar, and salt. Bring the mixture to close to a boil, but don’t let it boil over.

2) While the cream and milk mixture is heating, mix the egg yolks and remaining sugar in a medium size bowl.

3) When the milk and cream mixture has come close to a boil, remove from heat and scoop out 1 cup of the mixture. Slowly pour it into the egg yolk and sugar mixture and whisk it together. (Make sure to keep whisking—we’re not making scrambled eggs here, friends!) Continue scooping in the heated milk and cream mixture and whisk into the egg yolk and sugar mixture until it’s all combined.

4) Pour the whole mixture back into the saucepan and return to stove over medium heat. Use a thermometer to check the temperature and continue heating the mixture until you reach 160 degrees F. (Salmonella is not our friend!) If you don’t have a thermometer, you can use a wooden spoon, constantly stirring the mixture until it thickens slightly and is able to coat the back of the spoon. This should only take a couple of minutes. Don’t boil, or the yolks will overcook.

5) Add confetti cake mix and whisk in until smooth.

6) Let the mixture cool and add vanilla extract.

7) Place mixture in sealed container in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

8) Place the ice cream maker’s freezer bowl into the freezer for 24 hours.

9) Optional: 1-2 hours before you plan to make the ice cream, place cooled mixture into the freezer.

10) Turn on the ice cream maker and pour the mixture into the freezer container. Let the mix thicken (about 20-25 minutes).

11) Have your wife taste it so she can give it the thumbs-up.

12) Place ice cream in freezer-safe container and place in freezer for at least 3 hours.

13) Eat and enjoy!

*We were dismayed to find that when we cooked the mixture, the confetti colors disappeared. We recommend adding sprinkles to the scoops when serving.

Hope you enjoy the ice cream—and as you do, marvel at God’s creative work at merging two into one.

Today’s Christian Woman just posted my article about love letters…and how they’re sometimes written with something other than pen and paper.

Unexpected Love Letters

I’m a sucker for old-fashioned letters and old-fashioned romance, so I felt like a teenager at prom when I happened upon a book called Love Letters of Great Men. I waited all day before cracking it open, eager to sink my teeth into it as if it were the literary equivalent of dark chocolate.

At first I was savoring the letters—these epistles dating as far back as Pliny the Younger almost 2,000 years ago and capturing the words of some of the political and literary greats in the centuries since. I was taken by the beauty of the language, the permanence of the sentiments, and the artistry of the writers as they sought to capture their passion and pin it down with ink and paper. In short, I wanted to love those love letters.

But then something unexpected happened: I started digging up biographical information about a few of these “great men,” and suddenly their words sounded less like soaring symphonies and more like discordant clanging.